If you were a vastly wealthy Roman Senator, the chances are excellent that your garden would look very much like the outer Peristyle--the outer garden--of the Getty Villa gardens.  

It is a classic Mediterranean garden:  enclosed by walls, a few palms and shrubs growing in neat patterns, art works placed along the walkways and a long, shallow reflecting pool at its center.  There is no lawn and few flowering plants.  The colonnade along all four sides offers shelter from hot Mediterranean--or in this case, California--sunlight. 

Sculpture such as this "Bust of a Man" are part of Getty's collection sited along the pool.  The interior walls of the colonnade around the garden are painted with murals.

Seen from the garden, the Getty Villa Museum is a re-creation of a Roman villa, the Villa dei Papiri, which was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79A.D.

In those times it would have been a grand country home with many rooms surrounding a central courtyard.  The garden, called a Peristyle, would have been in front of the villa.  When John Paul Getty had the Villa and its gardens built, his goal was to have a place to house his extraordinary art collection.

Another garden is at  the center of the Getty Villa Museum. Like the main garden it has sculpture lining a narrow, shallow pool.   All the ground floor rooms in the villa can be entered directly from this Inner Peristyle.

Yet another garden, much smaller, is off one side of the Getty Villa Museum.  It is walled, but has no shady colonnade and the pool is for lilies and other water-loving plants.  The fountain against the wall is covered with tiny tiles.

On the west side of the Getty Villa is a large kitchen garden.  There you will find date palms, fig trees, grapes, lavender and other edible herbs and plants which would have grown in a Roman Senator's country garden. The produce from this garden would have been used to feed  family and household members during the Roman era. 

John Paul Getty never saw the finished villa.  He passed away in England before it was entirely complete.  Today, it is home to his antiquities collection, and the other art works he owned can be found at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.  The Getty Villa website is here.

Take these Hot Gardens online preview tours, too:    

Los Angeles Arboretum and Botanic Garden  - near Pasadena

Huntington Gardens Desert Garden - near Pasadena

Descanso Gardens - near Pasadena

Arlington Garden - in Pasadena

Getty Villa Gardens - Malibu

South Coast Botanic Garden - southwest Los Angeles

Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden - Claremont, California

Santa Barbara Gardens - Santa Barbara, California

Santa Barbara Botanic Garden  - Santa Barbara, California

Tucson Public Gardens  - Tucson, Arizona

Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden  - Phoenix, Arizona

Balboa Park Gardens, San Diego, California

Tropical Garden in the Dominican Republic

Shore Acres Gardens - Coos Bay Oregon

San Luis Obispo Creek Park - San Luis Obispo, California

Japanese Garden - Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California

Japanese Garden - Long Beach, California